Successful Practices: Optimizing the use of e-mail in your online course

If you are teaching an online course, be it synchronous or asynchronous, e-mail is an essential tool in your communication strategy. It is an effective way to communicate with one or many students, as well as a means for students to reach out to you. As mentioned in a previous post, e-mail can be a blessing, but it can also be a curse if you do not manage student expectations (and your own!) by establishing a pro-active communication strategy.

One of the frequent conversations I have with fellow faculty is how to optimize the use of e-mail to maximize the effectiveness of online instructors. Here are a few things I have learned over the years when using e-mail in my online courses:

1.       Create a dedicated e-mail account for your online course.

One of my first suggestions when starting a new online course is to create a separate, dedicated e-mail address for the course. This allows me to share the e-mail account with others (e.g., teaching assistants), and aggregates all course-specific correspondence into a dedicated space that is much easier to organize. I also use this same e-mail to send any correspondence to the class (as opposed to my work or personal e-mail). This makes it easier for me to find sent messages or to reuse them from one semester to another.

2.       Use the autoreply feature to confirm the receipt of e-mail.

I was quite surprised by the number of messages I was getting from over-anxious students who needed to know if I had received their assignments. All they needed was my confirmation that the file got through so they could enjoy piece of mind. However, unlike when you complete an online transaction and get a “confirmation number” or at least some sort of message confirming the transaction, e-mail does not provide this reassurance …unless you turn on your “autoreply” feature (also known as the “I’m on vacation” reply).

So if you are using a dedicated e-mail address for your online course, my suggestion is to use the autoreply feature to send a message like this one: 

Hello,

This is to confirm that we have received your e-mail. If it is an assignment, it will be added to the queue. If it is a question, it will be answered shortly.

This is an automated message. Please do not respond to it.

Thank you,

The (enter course name) Instructional Team

 

As an added measure, I suggest to my students to CC or BCC themselves on any assessments they send via e-mail, not just to ensure that they got through, but also to “save” them in case they need to find them at a later time (cloud-based storage spaces such as Google Drive, Skydrive, and Dropbox can also do the trick).

3.     Reuse answers to common questions can be reused in other replies, and to identify content gaps.

With some exceptions, the e-mail messages I typically get from the students are not unique. They ask questions about particular content, they need clarifications for a given assessment, they want to know how to study to optimize their performance on the upcoming quiz, etc... If I decide that an e-mail warrants a lengthier-than-usual response and it requires some additional effort on my part, then I will look for a way to avoid a “one and done” situation.

If I judge that the question and response would benefit the entire class (i.e., it deals with a common issue), I may post it directly to the discussion board (I would remove the name of the student unless I have their permission to include it). In those cases, I would thank the student for their excellent question and let them know that I deemed it worthy enough to be shared with the class via the DB. The goal here is obviously to avoid additional similar questions, but also to encourage the use of the DB as a useful forum for these types of resources.

There are also situations where I have found myself copying the question and my response and saving these in a separate file. I would then call upon this file in following semesters to find the responses, and share them with the teaching assistants as they needed it, and more importantly, this method helps to identify opportunities to “tighten up” the content as I prepare for the next offering. I oftentimes BCCed myself so that I could store certain replies and review them at semester’s end. This exercise has helped me with the continual improvement of the course by refining existing content, adding remedial explanations, clarifying instructions, and if needed, scheduling live virtual office hours when I suspect that the questions are forthcoming.

4.       Embrace the power of mass e-mail

E-mail is my preferred method for sending out mass communications to my class. I will use it to send out the welcome message at the beginning of the semester, reminders for upcoming deadlines, announcements, general tips, etc… Despite the fact that the discussion board might be the most useful tool for Q&A and to get the pulse of the class, e-mail is effective because of its simplicity and its ubiquitous acceptance as the preferred method of communication with students. Let’s face it, students are more likely to check their e-mail than to log into the course website and verify the discussion board. The behaviour to check their e-mail regularly is already established, and they can do so from many different devices. In this era of free e-mail services, the challenge is to make sure that the e-mail address you are using is their “preferred” one…something that I try to establish at the beginning of the semester when I tell my students that the e-mail they use when they create their account with the university is the one I will be using to communicate with them.

Of course, sending a mass e-mail out can also increase the chances of getting individual replies from students, potentially increasing your own inbox traffic. But I have found that the use of pro-active mass e-mailing has in fact reduced the amount of e-mail I have been receiving. It all comes down to the timing of the communication. Given that I know the types of questions that are imminent as certain deadlines approach, I will not wait until the questions come flooding in to address them. This is where the communication plan is key (see previous blog entry on survival tips to manage communication). Additional follow-up questions can be handled on the discussion board, or perhaps you could consider redirecting students to other resources on the website for more information.

5.       Get your e-mail opened!

The true test of the effectiveness of any e-mail you send is that the recipient opens and reads it. What’s the point of taking the time to craft a useful and informative e-mail that nobody reads? In a classroom setting I have a good idea how many students “got the message” because they are physically present and I have their attention (for the most part). But when dealing with e-mail, I do not have that luxury. So how do I increase the chances that my e-mail, which is competing for attention in my student’s inbox with everything else, is opened and read?

Here are a few things that have worked for me:

·         I try not to inundate my students with e-mail.

o   If I send out too much it eventually becomes noise like any other SPAM people typically ignore. I try to limit my mass messages to one a week, as per my communication plan.
 

·         I do my best to make the messages useful.

o   If my students expect to find something useful in the messages, they will get into the habit of opening them. What useful for a student? Tips and hints on how to improve their grades!
 

·         I try to keep the messages short and sweet.

o   I don’t read long e-mail messages…I scan them for important points first, and then look at details. The shorter the e-mail, the greater the chance that I will read it entirely. This is the same for my students (if not worse!), so I do my best to get to the point right away and push them to other spots on the course website for additional details. This is something I am still working on improving!
 

·         I use formatting features when I think they can be useful.

o   This point relates to the previous one about “scanning” for important information. I will bold, CAPITALIZE, and use italics when I want to emphasise something (e.g., deadlines). I will also use bullets and “to-do” lists for instructions.
 

·         I use the subject line to get their attention.

o   One thing that I came to realize as I researched ways to optimize my e-mail is the importance of the subject line. Think about what influences your decision to open an e-mail: you start by looking at the sender’s name (or address if the name is not specified). If you recognize that e-mail or person, there is a higher chance that you’ll go to the next step, the subject line. Those 6-10 words that appear in the subject line are crucial in the decision to open the e-mail…and this is where words like “Deadline,” “Exam,” “Respond by,” and “Important” increase the chances of this happening.

For more ideas on how to optimize the chances that my e-mail will be opened, I have turned to those pests who send me spam messages (i.e., e-mail marketing), as well as to research about response rates with surveys. For example, I found that http://www.copyblogger.com/37-email-marketing-tips/ had some useful ideas, as did the article Return to Sender: Improving Response Rates for Questionnaires by Jack and Patti Phillips (Performance Improvement, August 2004, see: www.ispi.org).

Whereas an internet marketer would rate the success of their campaign with conversion rates, my indicator would include fewer questions, better performance on assessments, and reduced dropout rates.

The danger of teaching an online course, especially when enrolments are high, is the potential of the inbox swelling to the point where communication is no longer manageable (call it inboxititis?). On the other hand, if used effectively, e-mail can actually save the online instructor countless hours of needless work.

Over the years I have found that not only has my volume of e-mails decreased (despite increasing enrolments), but when I do answer e-mail, I devote more time to crafting an effective response because I know that this investment of my time will pay dividends because it will not be immediately followed by more questions.

E-mail is not the only tool that I use to manage communications in my online course. In the next blog entry, I will discuss how the discussion board has gradually become the most important method of communication with my class, and present the strategies I used to foster its use.  

5 survival tips for managing the communication in your online course (part 3 of 3)

This is the third, and last part of my blog entry on managing the communication in your online course. Instructors, be they online or in-class, are more often than not left to themselves to gather whatever resources they can to manage their classes. For the online instructor, the scarcest resource is the time needed to learn unfamiliar technology (hardware and software) to the point where they are able to use it to save them time in their tasks. What a paradox! 

But why stress over finding inexistent time to invest in new technologies if you are able to make use of tools that you are already familiar with to do the job? The goal of this last tip is to help you find ways to make effective use of what you have at your disposal first, prior to investing in learning new tools to optimize your communication techniques.

5. Use the communication tools at your disposal

Available resources differ for everyone. Some will have access to technical assistance and advanced communication tools, whereas others are left to fend for themselves with little or no assistance. Finding the right tool to communicate with your students may come down to what you have at your disposal rather than what you would like to have. The good news is that there are plenty of tools out there; the bad news is that installing, learning, and mastering them can sometimes require quite a chunk of your time. That being said, perhaps a small investment of your time will make your life easier in the long run, in terms of managing communication.

Most online courses are hosted on some sort of LMS (Learning Management System), so chances are you have an option to send a mass message to the class. If a LMS is indeed being used to host your course, you hopefully have access to some sort of discussion board as well. Perhaps you will also have a news forum where you can make announcements, a calendar feature to post upcoming assessments, and a chat room where you can host live office hours. You might even have access to a blog which could be used as an effective one-to-many platform to communicate with your students. More sophisticated LMSs might also have a push messaging system that will automatically send email or cell phone text messages (SMS) to students at a particular day and time, a virtual space that can be used for live tutoring, or perhaps a desktop videoconferencing system.

But I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that if you are reading this blog, you likely do not have your own personal Geek Squad at your beck and call. If you are new to online teaching and/or are not too comfortable with learning new technologies, then keep things simple. Stick to email, the discussion board, and the good ol’ reliable telephone (if you have one provided for work, not your personal one). If you have the opportunity to use a conferencing system (your institution might have the service to conduct meetings), this could be a very viable option to host live sessions. Email is likely the most common tool that an online instructor will have access to, and chances are that you will have the students’ email addresses in your class list. Failing that, post an announcement to the class to send their info to you as part of an initial ice-breaker activity.

Those of you who are a little more adventurous, and who have a good idea what kind of questions you normally get and when you get them, might want to try recording your own podcast using free audio recording software such as Audacity (for tips on how to record good quality audio, read the following blog entry by one of my colleagues at KnowledgeOne). You could also consider using CamStudio, Windows Movie Maker, or the software that came with your built-in laptop camera to create just-in-time video explanations (e.g., how to do an assignment, how to access the online quiz, etc…). It might save you the time you would otherwise need to type it all out, include screen shots, etc…

That being said, if you are going to go through all of this trouble make sure that you have an easy way to upload these files so that they are accessible for your students. Be mindful of the upload file size limitations that are prevalent in most LMSs (media files are large). Failing that, you could also consider uploading your videos to YouTube (if you don’t mind it being accessible to the public) or using a free cloud-based storage service such as Dropbox, SkyDrive, or Google Drive (by sharing the public link with your class). But since these services lie outside the secure firewall of the LMS, be mindful of what content you are uploading given that it could be accessed by non-students if the URL is shared (aka: know your copyright restrictions!).  

Of course, another way of communicating with your students is via platforms that most of them are already using, namely social media. If you opt for this route, be mindful of your institution’s policy on the use of social media. If you are introducing a feature whereby your learners must sign up to participate, you might be violating privacy policies since this requires participants to share personal information to create their accounts, and their contributions are no longer behind the confines of the LMSs firewall.

Also keep in mind that despite the fact that everyone seems to be on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, or Twitter, it doesn’t necessarily mean they want to use their social media accounts for your class. That being said, I received a fairly positive response from my students this semester when I polled them on using Twitter to get my announcements, so perhaps I will give that a try one day. But if I do create a Twitter handle dedicated to my online course, I will make sure to communicate to the students that this is an optional alternative to the course website where the same information can be found. Blogger and Wordpress are other popular options to create your own blog; Skype could be used for live conferencing (and group calls with up to 25 people), and Windows Live Messenger can host a chat room. The blogs do not require any student to sign-up, but the others do.

In summary, although there are many potential tools for communicating with your students, the trick is to select the ones that you are most likely to use on a regular basis as opposed to the ones that you think would be “cool” for the students. If there is a steep learning curve needed to make use of that tool (e.g., recording, editing, and publishing your own videos) and you do not have the time and/or technical support to help you with it, chances are that this is not the best option for a regular communication tool.

The tools you are most likely to lean on are the ones you already have at your disposal and know how to use. In other words, if you are comfortable sending out email, making discussion board posts, talking on the telephone, and hosting the occasional live virtual class, then stick to these tools first and foremost. Once you have had the chance to assess the communication needs in your course (i.e., you have identified the hot spots) and have tried a few interventions, you can consider increasing the complexity by experimenting with other tools.

This concludes this three-part series on survival tips to manage the communications in your online course. If this was of interest for you (or of any use), stay tuned for the next series of entries where I will go more in depth on the effective use of the “common” communication tools used in online courses: email, the discussion board, the telephone, and the virtual classroom. 

I hope that some of these tips prove to be useful for your situation. Please feel free to share your own “war stories” and suggestions for ways to manage communication in your online course by using the comments field below or email me at patdevey@gmail.com.

5 survival tips for managing the communication in your online course (part 2 of 3)

This is the second of a three-part series on managing the communication in your online course. In this section I will discuss the importance of setting proper (“realistic”) expectations from your students, extol the use of the discussion board over email as the main mode of communication in the class, and suggest introducing the occasional (and timely) live sessions.

2. Set the communication expectations

If you respond to students within 10 minutes of receiving their email, they will no doubt be impressed by your quick feedback, and you will be pleased with your quick turnaround. But what will their expectations for feedback be the next time that they have a question? I’m all for quick feedback and deleting one more message from my inbox, but one lesson I learnt early in my online teaching career is to be mindful of the expectations I am setting if I am “too” efficient with my responses. I feel awkward mentioning this because it seems counter-intuitive, but hear me out.

Some online instructors claim that they are reachable 24/7 and do their best to abide by that rule. I, on the other hand, would like to remain married to my beautiful wife. This, along with my physical and psychological well-being, would be seriously compromised if I tried to maintain a 24/7 schedule for my online courses. Therefore, I make a point to let students know at the beginning of the semester what they can expect from me vis-à-vis communication. For example, they can expect a response from me within 2 business days for questions (and I insist that they include the word “question” in the subject field so I can prioritize it), and within a week for returning assignments. This does not mean that I necessarily wait 2 business days to respond to student queries, but I do try to be strategic in pacing my feedback. For example, during a day that a quiz is due, I may respond to issues quickly because this will alleviate follow-up tasks (e.g., resetting the quiz due to a technical problem). On the other hand, a question about the final exam, which is two months away, can wait.

Furthermore, I find that if I fight the urge to instantly respond to email, the students will figure out the answer on their own (via the course outline or the discussion board), and send a follow-up email a few minutes later telling me to ignore their previous message. Otherwise, I try to set some time every work day (usually first thing in the morning accompanied by a strong coffee) to peruse through my inbox and/or the discussion board to respond to messages. I find that establishing my own routine helps reinforce the communication expectation and, at the same time, helps manage my inbox and schedule.

3. Encourage the use of the discussion board over email for questions

The discussion board is the most important communication tool in asynchronous online courses. I am convinced that the early introduction of the discussion board in my online course was the biggest contributing factor to the reduction in the volume of email I would otherwise get.

When a student raises his or her hand to ask a question in the classroom, the answer is heard by everyone present. Chances are that the question is one that others in the class also had, or would have at some point. The discussion board serves as a surrogate for these situations, albeit not in real time. This means that responses to questions are recorded and can be found by the students when they are needed, thus saving instructors from having to respond to the same questions via email. 

As an added bonus, since the discussion board can be set up to be open (non-moderated), students can respond to each other, thus further reducing the time for feedback. This welcome side-effect has not only contributed to the reduction of my email queries, but it has also reduced the number of discussion board postings I would otherwise have to respond to. That being said, it is important to correct erroneous information as quickly as possible (if and when it appears), and I also think that it is important to validate certain responses made by the students to show that the instructor is indeed following the conversations. I also admit that I have recruited a teaching assistant or two based on their performance in the course and their participation on the discussion board!

This is not to say that email is not a useful tool. I still use it to send out my mass messages since students are more likely to check their email regularly than the class discussion board. However, if students get in the habit of using the discussion board as the primary platform to pose their questions, then perhaps the response to their question already exists, or a conversation that would otherwise be private becomes available to everyone, and the speed of the response may be shortened significantly if other students are motivated to help their classmates. With that in mind, the challenge is to get students to consult the discussion board first and foremost when they have a question and to find ways to use that platform as the primary mode of communication. Techniques to promote the use of the discussion board will be the subject of another blog post.

4. Host a live virtual orientation session

Despite the fact that the course is delivered asynchronously, I highly encourage some sort of live presentation at the beginning of the semester (if possible). Granted, many students will likely not be able to attend due to scheduling conflicts (or apathy), but I have found that the opportunity to address them in a live setting and answer their questions about assessments, communication preferences, and online learning significantly cuts down on the volume of questions I would otherwise get at the beginning of the semester. As previously mentioned, I have identified the beginning of the semester as not only a rush hour for communication, but a time when I get many repeat questions. So the main reason for the orientation session is essentially to save me from answering the same questions over and over via email. This is no different than what transpires in the first class of a traditional setting where an instructor would normally go over the course syllabus and respond to student questions as they arise.

I am fortunate enough to have access to a live virtual class platform (Adobe Connect), so this is my preferred mode of delivery to host the orientation session, usually at the end of the first week of the semester. The session is announced via email prior to the start of the semester and it is listed in the course syllabus and class agenda. What I especially like about this platform is the fact that I can record the session and make it available for those who missed out by making the URL public and sharing it with the class.

In the case of my statistics course, given the nature of the subject, I prefer to host the occasional live office hour to answer problem-solving questions and to use the interactive whiteboard to demonstrate step-by-step solutions. It’s easier to draw the normal distribution than to write about it in an email! These sessions are usually scheduled a week prior to the assignment deadline, and I also use the platform to host an end-of-semester tutorial to walk students through some problem-solving exercises.

As for scheduling the live sessions, I have been making use of our Learning Management System’s (LMS) logs to see when students are most/least likely to be online (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Student traffic by days of the week and hours of the day

In my case, I have found that weekdays are better than weekends, and evenings are better than mornings or afternoons. I am also aware that many students prefer not to have classes on Fridays, so this is another option. In the end, knowing that I would not be able to accommodate everyone, I opted for Wednesday evening for the orientation session and early Friday afternoons for the office hours. As long as I have some sort of recording available afterwards, all students will have access to the same information.

Prior to having access to the live virtual platform I would conduct the same type of session via telephone conference call, and prior to that, I would actually reserve a classroom on campus and invite the students to come meet me in person. Because those sessions could not be recorded, I would record a video or audio introduction afterwards and post it on the course website (I use Audacity for audio recordings and CamStudio for screen recordings). The focus of such recordings would centre on the assessments (since this is at the root of the majority of the questions I would get) along with other major items from the course outline.  

This blog entry was the second of a three-part series on managing the communication in your online course. In the next and last segment, I will present tips to optimize the use of the common communication tools that you are already familiar with. If you are open to learning some new tools and techniques, I will suggest some free software that you might want to consider adopting to further enhance the effectiveness of your communication strategy.

5 survival tips for managing the communication in your online course (part 1 of 3)

Teaching an online course presents numerous challenges for instructors who are accustomed to the classroom environment, especially if it is asynchronous (i.e., not “live”). For starters, there is the loss of live interaction. You can’t, for instance, read non-verbal cues to see if students “get it,” and, inversely, students can’t raise their hands to ask questions. There is also the risk that discussions will get “out of hand” when you are not present to moderate them, and that misinformation will spread like wildfire throughout the class.

But all of these pale in comparison to the biggest challenge that new online instructors face when teaching online courses: managing the communication. In the classroom environment, communication is carried out verbally and is “just-in-time.” In other words, instructors take advantage of the fact that they have the students grouped together in one location to deliver the course content, make announcements, answer any follow-up questions on-the-spot (examples of one-to-many communication), or stick around after class to respond to students one-on-one (one-to-one communication). Other opportunities for communication with students come with scheduled office hours, occasional phone and email queries, and the random encounters at the local pub (okay, I’ll speak for myself).

In asynchronous online courses, most one-to-many and one-to-one communication between instructor and students, as well as among students, is carried out electronically (especially via email and the discussion board) at any time of the day…or night. Add to that the fact that online courses will typically have more students enrolled in them compared to the traditional classroom (in some cases, an exponentially larger number), and this translates into a potentially overwhelming flood of communication coming your way!  

And if that is not enough, the second biggest challenge is placating the unreasonable, sometimes ludicrous, expectations of the students when it comes to your response time to queries. In this era of instant communications thanks to smart phones and social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc…), instructors are oftentimes frustrated by some of their students’ “demands.” Should your student really be expecting an instant response to his or her “how much is the final exam worth?” question at 3AM on a Sunday? Hopefully not…unless your response is “read the $#%@ course syllabus!!!!”

So for those of you who are not totally discouraged at this point, let’s turn our focus to ways to survive the imminent volume and unrealistic student expectations vis-à-vis communication in your online courses. Taking control of these communications requires a proactive strategy rather than a reactive one, so it is essential that you take the time to carefully plan yours prior to the start of the semester.

In this 3-part blog entry (the original document was too lengthy to post as a single entry), I have identified 5 particular tips that have helped me survive this past decade as an online instructor. I will present the first one in this posting, 2-4 in the second post, and the final tip and summary in my third.

So without further ado, here is the first of my 5 survival tips for managing the communication in your online course.

1. Establish a communication plan

When marketing and communication professionals talk about communication plans, they discuss them in terms of being strategic and goal-oriented. This is no different in online courses. Our goal is to reduce the volume of unnecessary communication, establish realistic expectations for the students, and to be strategic in our interventions so that they are as effective as possible. To accomplish this, consider when students were most likely to reach out to you during the semester. When did you get more questions than usual when you taught the course in class? What are the most common questions that you get throughout the semester and when are they typically asked?

As part of a research project for a graduate course I took a few years ago, I tried to map the communication in a complete 13-week semester for an online course by monitoring the volume of email received by the instructor (in a dedicated course email account). I used the data to construct the following graph (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: email traffic for an undergraduate online course

As can be seen, the majority of the communication occurred at the beginning of the semester, during week 7 (this course had a midterm exam), and at the end of the semester. I then worked with the instructor to “attack” the high traffic areas with pro-active interventions using various communication tools. I would have liked to have mapped out the “after” graph but I did not have the university’s clearance to access the email logs a second time (my course was over and I was not a university employee at the time). But using anecdotal evidence (i.e., the instructor telling me that they spend less time answering email messages) and the bottle of wine I get from them every year, I am confident that the interventions worked out!  

Mapping out the potential “hot spots” in your online course is an important exercise to carry out prior to the start of the semester, for it serves as the blueprint to your communication strategy. In my Introduction to Statistics online course, which is offered over a 13-week semester to undergraduate students at Concordia University, I have identified the following high traffic areas:

Week	Details
0	The week prior to the start of the semester: How to access the course, common worries associated with online course “rookies” (e.g., How much time should I devote to the course? Will anyone be available to help me? Is this course right for me?).
1	Questions about the course outline, general questions about how students will be assessed (including the final exam), and on how to get started with the course (access, materials, etc…).
3	Questions specific to the first take-home assignment. Occasional questions about how to get started (especially from students who enrolled recently[1]).
5	Questions specific to the first quiz (what can be expected, how to access it, how to prepare for it, etc…).
6	Why did I do so poorly on the quiz? Why was this question wrong? What can I do to improve my grade on the next one? How did I do compared to the rest of the class?
8	Questions specific to the second take-home assignment.
11	A few questions about take-home assignment 3 and the final exam (what’s on it and what’s not, how to study for it, etc…)
13	OMG, the final exam is next week and I’m freaking out!

In summary, with the exception of the first two weeks which deal with onboarding issues, the majority of the student queries revolve around assessments (no surprise!). So instead of waiting on the questions that are destined to come my way, I have pre-crafted a series of instructions, tips, and reminders for students, and made a schedule to remind myself when to push out these communiqués (see Figure 2). There is no sense sending out hints about how to approach Assignment 3 (due in week 12) within the first week of class. It’s not on their radar at the moment. A more effective intervention would be a “pre-emptive strike” a week or so prior to the deadline to address those questions. Sure, you might have some keeners who want to get ahead and tackle the assignment early, but for the most part, students do not worry about a deadline until they are within a week of it.

Figure 2: My calendar of communication reminders for the two courses I taught online in January 2013

For instructions and general tips about the assessments, I prefer to use a mass email to the class within a week of the deadline. I find that sending out deadline reminders 2-3 business days prior to the due date is most effective. What I like about sending out email messages is that it not only ensures that I send some sort of communication to the class on a regular basis (I find it a good practice to communicate with the class in some way at least once a week), but also that I get to refine and reuse those common messages from semester to semester. I use a dedicated Microsoft Outlook calendar (not to be mixed with my “real” one) and employ its pop-up naggers to remind me to send out the messages; this system also provides me with a place to refine and save my messages so that they can be found the next time I teach the course (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: The welcome message I send to my students that I save in my calendar so I can reuse it.

 

This blog entry was the first of a three-part series on managing the communication in your online course. In the next segments I will suggest ways to establish “realistic” expectations from your students vis-à-vis communication, push the use of the discussion board as a way to save you from answering the same question repeatedly, and explore ways to optimize the common communication tools that you are already familiar with before deciding to invest more time in learning new ones.

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[1] Late additions to a class seem to be a more common occurrence in online courses since some admissions counsellors consider these courses as being “easier to catch up” in. This may be true in theory, but I am finding that in practice this is not the case. A subject of another blog post one day!

Welcome/Bienvenue to the Surviving e-Learning Blog

sur·viv·al (/sərˈvīvəl/)

1.      Noun - The state or fact of continuing to live or exist, typically in spite of an accident, ordeal, or difficult circumstances. (source: dictionary.com)

Why survival?

Okay, so perhaps associating survival to e-Learning may be a bit of a stretch, but as an “accidental” online instructor who was tossed into the deep end over a decade ago, you have to appreciate the subtle similarities with the definition. My foray into online education started with taking an online course, a first at my university at the time, spending hours in the dedicated computer lab playing games with my classmates, somehow excelling in the course (no thanks to the course material), and letting my instructor know how horrid the entire experience was. My “reward” was an A+ and a job as the teaching assistant. Two years later I was handed the reins to a university-level undergraduate online course and asked to “run with it.” Oh, and did I mention that the course was Introduction to Statistics?!!!* Perhaps the word “survival” applied more to my first few years as an online instructor than it does today. Sure, there are some mornings when I still question why I ever agreed to teach an online course (usually when I look at my unread e-mail messages first thing in the morning), but these thoughts are less frequent than they once were. When I got started I knew nothing about designing and developing online courses, let alone teaching in general. I made up for my lack of experience (or tried to) by doing a lot of reading, attending some conferences and seminars, and by experimenting with tools to create web pages, graphics, animations, and media. Some ideas worked well, others…not so much. Over time I developed enough proficiency with the tools, and experience with the students, to manage through the semesters. I found a way to survive.

Why this blog?

Early in my journey as an online instructor, I realized that I was not alone. Many others have been thrust into the e-Learning spotlight, some even by choice! Online courses have evolved greatly in recent years thanks to continual changes with the technology, rapid e-Learning and publishing tools, the prominence of online soapboxes (e.g., YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and yes, this blog), the establishment of research-based standards and best practices, and an increasing “acceptance” of this form of instruction thanks to massive open online courses (MOOCs). The time is ripe to share my experiences in hopes of helping others “survive” the same obstacles I once faced, and those I continue to encounter. Since the time I first took on the challenge of designing, developing, and teaching an online course, I have completed both a master’s and a doctorate degree in educational technology with a focus on instructional design in online learning. My dissertation focused on the reasons that students voluntarily drop out of online courses and what we (as instructors, designers, and administrators) can do about it.

If you are having trouble sleeping, and/or if this topic genuinely interests you, here is the complete dissertation and the presentation I made based on it at Sloan-Consortium’s International Conference on Online Learning which won the “Best-in-Track Award for Student Services and Learner Support.”

As Chief Learning Officer at KnowledgeOne (+KnowledgeOne)  I have participated in various capacities in the design and development of over 75 online courses (mostly asynchronous), I continue to teach online courses at Concordia University (+Concordia University) in Montréal, Canada, I still conduct research on online learning and teaching, I present at various conferences about online learning, and I continue to learn new tricks. Unfortunately, despite all my good intentions, I have not been able to find the time (ok, the patience) to write articles based on my research and experience. So here I am, writing my first of hopefully multiple blog entries, to set the stage for what is to come.
 

Who is this blog for?

If you teach online courses or are thinking of doing so; if you design, develop, or administer them; or if you have an interest in online learning as a student or as a teacher…I hope that you will find something useful somewhere in this blog. If not, try googling it (whatever that means).  My writing will focus on practical ideas to make your e-Learning life easier. And, for the most part, these will be tips and tricks that I have tried myself. Hopefully they will save you time, make your tasks more efficient, or simply give some crazy ideas to try out when the time is right. For example, I will be sharing tips to help reduce the volume of your e-mail inbox (a common complaint of online instructors), suggest ways to motivate students to help each other out, and identify opportunities to cut down on useless and repetitive tasks. So in a nutshell, I want to help make your job easier. Interested?

I also hope to hear about your experiences, suggestions, and your problems, and I would like to share these and possible solutions with other like-minded souls who are looking for better ways to manage their online learning or teaching experience. So essentially, this blog is indeed all about surviving e-Learning.  

 

The logo I “borrowed” from some television game show. I’m sure you’ve never heard of it.

*Truth be told, I like statistics…especially as they relate to sports. But since I seem to be in the minority on that opinion, I figured it would reinforce the notion of “survival” given that not only was it my first experience teaching online, but the subject was statistics…or “sadistics” as some of my students have called it!